Recently, I have been assembling models outside of any pre-processors and found that the use of Makefile can often be very helpful in putting together models on the fly provided you have a good process of storing the models in subsystems. A simple example is show below.

# Comment starts with a pound sign
# Content of Make File
# some global variables
LS_DYNA=/path/to/lsdyna/
LS_PREPOST=/path/to/prepost

# targets
side_impact_model:
      @ cat barrier.i vehicle.i > side_impact_model.k
      @ ${LS_DYNA} i=side_impact_model.k
      @ ${LS_PREPOST} c=sideimpact.lspcom
front_impact_model:
      @ cat wall.i vehicle.i > front_impact_model.k
      @ ${LS_DYNA} i=front_impact_model.k
      @ ${LS_PREPOST} c=frontimpact.lspcom
pack:
      @ tar -cvf files.tar *.i
      @ gzip files.tar

Here’s how to use it.

make front_impact_model
make pack